Former Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program director Robin Hemley will read from his newest book, How to Change History: A Salvage Project. Described as a grappling with "the individual’s navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories," How to Change History meditates on a range of media, from photos and historical markers to "incontinent dachshunds," and attempts to "restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost" (robinhemley.com). Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers, praises How to Change History as "a highly unselfconscious form of memoir, an intimate form of engagement with Robin Hemley’s past but by way of broader subjects, which, as a methodology, has the effect of opening up the genre, the subjects at large, and the writer’s life," while Michele Morano, author of Grammar Lessons and Like Love, says, "With humor, deep insight, and keen self-scrutiny, Robin Hemley reminds us that although history can’t really be changed, our understanding of it remains open to revision."
Robin Hemley has published sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020, Penguin SE Asia, 2021). His new collection of essays is How to Change History: A Salvage Project (Nebraska, March, 2025). His work has been published and translated widely and he has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. He is the Founder of the international nonfiction conference, NonfictioNOW, and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years, inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is co-editor with Leila Philip of Speculative Nonfiction. He has delivered readings, workshops, and lectures around the world and is a Professor Emeritus at The University of Iowa. The Digital Storytelling Lab at The University of Iowa was recently dedicated in his honor.
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